For the lore of silver-mining let us ascend to Potosi, the Silver Mountain. Its summit rises in perfect sugar-loaf form to over 16,000 feet above the level of the sea. Upon the slopes of this wonderful mountain, some 2,000 or 3,000 feet lower down, stands a city, founded in 1545 by the adventurous Spaniards, with their keen _olfato_, or instinct for gold and silver, and fifty years later 150,000 folk had their habitations there. For lodes and seams of the richest silver ore lay here--native silver and others; and the shell of the mountain quickly became honeycombed with shafts and galleries. Of five thousand such, a thousand may be seen to-day. All classes of adventurers flocked to Potosi. There were bankrupt Spanish nobles, thinking by a lucky stroke, or with their name and prestige, to recoup themselves; there were merchants, anxious to obtain sudden wealth; gamblers, thieves, _demi-mondaines_ and all else, and Potosi became a centre of prodigality, romantic adventure, revelry and often disorder. Here Spanish _hidalgos_ vied with each other in squandering fortunes in pleasure and ostentation, matters which caused faction-strife among the bands into which the people of the place were divided. The old chronicles of Potosi are very interesting, revealing as they do the custom of those times, the superstition, the chivalry and all else, which not even the high and solemn environment of the Cordillera could dampen. To-day an English mining company works upon the mountain, striving to earn dividends for its shareholders. The silver is far from being exhausted, but methods of recovery fell back; and the low value of silver and the high rate of wage demanded by the miner were other factors in decadence. The Potosi mountain was not a possession of the Spaniard alone. It has a metallurgical interest more remote. A traveller in the Cordillera before the time of the Conquest might have seen, as he approached the spot at night, a number of twinkling lights upon the slopes. They were the fires of the little furnaces in which the Indians, of the Incas, smelted the simpler silver ores, the winds of the Cordillera furnishing the needful blast; and these furnaces were called in Quechua Guayras, which word means "the wind." It is said that at one time more than 15,000 of these little furnaces were to be seen upon the Silver Mountain, which reared its desolate slopes to heaven, but was a treasure-house of Nature. [Illustration: ACONCAGUA, THE HIGHEST ANDINE PEAK, CHILE. Vol. I. To face p. 288. ]